


Never be the Same Again

by myticanlegends



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Final Battle, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Reunions, Slow Burn, regaining trust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-02-10 12:32:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12912000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myticanlegends/pseuds/myticanlegends
Summary: Meera doesn't see Brandon Stark again until after the final battle against the white walkers. There's a world that needs to be put back together, a future that needs to be created, and a relationship that might take a while to fix but also might be worth it.A multi-chapter fic.





	1. Chapter 1

It had been months since Meera last left Bran in Winterfell in order to return home. To say her departure was disappointing would be an understatement but Meera had hardened herself to it. She had hardened herself to a lot of things. It was just one more check off of a list.

She would have worried more about it if not for the fact she had been too busy fighting a hoard of the undead rushing towards her and thousands of men and women, wildlings and free folk, northerners and southerners.

Jon Snow led them on the back of a dragon with the Dragon Queen by his side with her own second dragon. Meera didn’t quite know what to expect the dragons to do considering it was their brother carrying the Night King towards them with his icy flame. When the dragons flew, they were distracting in their might and power. Meera’s eyes drew naturally to them until it became obvious that if her focus was not on the ground, she would die in other ways than being burnt alive.

Meera sliced through a white walker with the Valerian steel sword she had found in the heart tree and immediately had another enemy at her back. Someone slayed it with a dragonstone spear and Meera didn’t have time to thank them. There was too much chaos in the middle of the mess. Wights clawed endlessly towards them without any sign of exhaustion. Meera killed another white walker to her left and wished she had stayed behind at the castle walls with her bow and arrows. She would have been more useful there.

But as she swung her sword again, Meera thought, this is for my brother. This is for Hodor. This is for Brandon Stark who might as well be dead.

But he was not dead.

She felt it more than she saw it coming, a spear headed for her back, and knowing it was probably too late to stop it’s landing, she turned anyway to face her enemy. A raven swooped down into the fray and clasped onto the handle of the weapon before it drove its way into her side. When the bird flew away, the spear clattering to the ground, Meera drove her own sword in the white walker.

Some exhausted part of her mind shouted, Bran! But there were too many white walkers to focus on anything but the heat of a nearby fire, the swing of her sword, and the screams of someone dying.

The goal had been to make it to the leaders, the strange icy figures that could raise the dead to the living, because if they stopped, those under their control stopped. Someone must have killed one at one point because scattered wights around them fell to the ground. It made the battlefield seem less claustrophobic if only for a moment. The Westerosi army cheered and fought with renewed vigor as thousands of people united. But soon after, more of the dead who had been killed in the battle rose to fight those who they used to know.

Meera and some of the soldiers drew back to the wall of Winterfell with the war remaining frustratingly tied. Even with two dragons in the sky, Meera could see Daenerys focusing her energy on fighting the third dragon and the Night King on its back. White walkers caught flame in large numbers with Jon Snow flying above but Meera wondered how long they could keep this up.

In the distance, she heard a howl. Through the woods came a hoard of animals lead by a fearsome direwolf and a girl by her side. Arya Stark. The Starks were truly a family of unflinching bravado.

The animals, likely with the help of Bran somewhere in his tower, leapt forward into battle and everything continued. Inside Winterfell there were women and children counting on them. Everyone was counting on them. If they didn’t survive this, there would be no more effort to put in.

Meera slipped inside.

There were elders holding daggers at their sides in frightened huddled forms and women wrapping their arms around their children. There were twice as many soldiers looking anxious but had their hands on their sword hilts in case they would need them.

There was a young boy on his own hiding behind a barrel of salt with murky hair and green eyes that reminded Meera of Jojen. He was crying.

Meera moved towards the stairs so she could grab a bow and help from a higher vantage point, then paused, then went back and kneeled in front of the boy. There was still screaming just beyond the gate and a loud roar that was deafening and everlasting.

“Hello,” she said softly, close enough to be heard. She set down her sword. “What’s your name?”

The boy said nothing, just wormed his way closer to the stone wall behind him.

“I’m Meera.”

He replied so softly she almost missed it, “Simon.”

“Simon?” She asked. “Where’s your mother, Simon?”

He glanced towards the gate and Meera immediately knew the answer. She inched closer and pulled a piece of dragonglass from her pocket, a last resort in case her sword failed. Simon’s eyes skimmed it but couldn’t seem to focus.

“Do you think your mother is brave?” Meera asked quietly. 

Slowly, he nodded.

“That’s good,” she continued to speak, hoping her words would calm him, just like she used to do for Jojen when he was younger. “She’s going to need to be brave. Are you brave too?”

The small boy hesitated and with her encouraging smile, he shook his head. There was another loud scream outside the gate and something thumped against the wall hard enough for it to shake. Simon immediately looked on the verge of a breakdown, sinking to the floor.

“No, no, no, look at me,” Meera pleaded as calmly as she could. “You are brave. Did you know that? Your mother is brave and I’m going to need you to be brave too, okay?” 

Carefully, he met her eyes again and for a second, but what felt like an hour, they both watched each other and prayed for a sense of calm. He must have found it because he took a deep breath and glanced down at her hand again where she was holding the dragonglass. She pressed the shard of dragonglass carefully into his small hands.

“I need you to hide,” Meera began carefully. “Run inside and find a room. Lock the door. And if any of them come in, I need you to attack them with this, okay?”

Simon wrapped his small young hands around the dragonglass and looked up at her again.

“Your mother would want you safe,” Meera said softly.

Slowly, the young boy nodded and then it became frantic as the pounding on the door increased. It was only when he had run inside, through the hallways of Winterfell, that Meera picked up her sword and turned to make her way quickly up the stairs to the archers. 

A bird stopped her in her tracks with it’s beady black eyes. It had clearly been watching her since she stepped foot inside. She blinked back at it if only for a second before charging past.

“You do not get to abandon me and suddenly care for my life, Brandon Stark,” she hissed as she passed. The bird squawked but she was already trading her sword for a bow and flaming arrows that felt much more comfortable in her hands as she pointed them towards at the impeding army.

It felt like days until the battle ended. Meera watched thousands of soldiers, men and women alike, die from the archery wall. She felt like every white walker she lit on fire was just replaced. But somehow, just somehow, the gate to Winterfell remained unpenetrated if not battered.

Finally, Daenerys Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of lots of things and whatever her numerous titles were, guided her dragon into a maneuver that shot flames directly at the Night King. It was unavoidable, the way both he and the dragon fell, and how the dragon’s brothers cried with sorrow. The large dragon collapsed into the chaos with a shaking impact on top of whoever could not escape. The white walkers below shattered into millions of pieces of ice to replace the snow and suddenly there was no one to fight. 

They were too exhausted to cheer. 

Some fell to their knees and some simply just fell, finally able to succumb to their wounds. Others rushed for their friends and family. Someone called for a medic but the only medics were already occupied in the great hall so there were only people gathering the injured and rushing them inside. The animals picked their way along for a few minutes before fleeing to the woods once more. A sea of bodies spread out across Meera’s vision.

She herself took a deep breath and lowered her bow. And then another breath. All she could focus on was her breathing. It meant she had made it and she wasn’t dead. Air filled her lungs and she had never noticed how important that had been before. She struggled to breath through a mixture of exhaustion and the ins and outs of her breath.

Some of the other archers scattered to collect the dead and she followed mindlessly. Another body. And then another. None of them were breathing like she was. Meera wondered if any of them were the small boy’s mother and if he was still hiding out in a bedroom with a tiny shard of dragonglass to protect him.

Meera passed a window and noted absentmindedly that she was covered in lots of blood and dirt and ash. She fell into a cot, a small threaded blanket really, and wished she was home with her father who was likely waiting for a raven to return with bad news. She had been close to that fate far too often that day.

The week after passed in a blur. Before they could celebrate, they had to sent messages to families that had been broken apart and a one to King's Landing to inform them that the battle had been won and that Daenerys Targaryen would be returning to reclaim her throne. They buried too many bodies to count but someone must have counted because Sansa Stark marked a long number on a scroll for the records of casualties in battle. She was poised in the middle of tragedy.

Jon Snow, or maybe Targaryen now, spent lots of his time alone or with the Dragon Queen. Meera wondered if he would join her in King's Landing or stay with the family he had been raised in.

Arya Stark’s face had always been solemn but it seemed more serious now than ever. Sometimes Meera would catch her looking towards the woods where a direwolf had run away the night after the battle.

As for Bran, Meera never saw him. She didn’t particularly feel like finding him but she longed to at the same time. She felt like a part of her was missing when he wasn’t there. He had been there for her for such a long time.

But she did see a raven. The same raven each time watching her from a familiar tower where she had last said goodbye to Brandon Stark.

It was only after all the bodies were buried that the people found themselves cheerful enough for a celebration. It was contagious, the mood of that night, because the realization finally occurred that it was over. There were friends and family that were dead but what selfishly mattered was that they were alive and that was something worth drinking about. Drinking over their sorrows, their loss, the breath in their bodies, their survival, and everyone else who had made it with them.

Meera gathered a pint of ale and chugged it down. 

The feast spared nothing and she gorged herself on food that she hadn’t been able to have after months on rations. There must have been a hunt, or multiple hunts, on the days in between then and their final stand against the white walkers.  
Sansa Stark stood up in the front of the room and all eyes turned on her. Her Tully red hair glowed and for once in Meera’s life, she saw her smile. 

“I’d like to raise a toast,” she started. “To the brave men and women who lost their lives saving us from the white walkers. Without their sacrifice, no one would be here today.”

"Hear, hear!” Someone shouted.

“And a toast to Daenerys,” Jon corrected. “Without her dragons and dragonglass, we never would have gotten anywhere.”

The cheer was less excitable but there were those drunk enough to be loud and even if many didn’t like her, their new queen had earned their respect and their favor. 

"To Jon Snow,” Daenerys added from her seat with a raised eyebrow, not to be out down. “For persuading me to join.”

The cheer was much louder then and random toasts were given throughout the feast.

“A toast to the wolf girl!”

“To the Queen of the North!”

“To the Imp!”

“A toast to Jamie Lannister! God knows why he joined us.”

“To the wildlings!”

“To the free folk!”

"Thank the gods for dragons!”

There was a name missing from the count, one Meera knew played a larger role than anyone suspected, and when Meera looked towards the front, she saw Bran watching her back. It had only been a few months but Meera felt like it should have been more. He looked remarkably the same. 

She looked back at her plate, her fingers tightening around her cup.

“A toast to the future,” Bran’s familiar voice called into the crowd of people, confident and strong in a way that he had grown into, and everyone around Meera raised their cups with loud cheers.

The words jarred her into looked up at him again but he had turned away and faced the general direction of the crowd of warriors and survivors. 

Meera hadn’t thought about the future. She hadn’t thought past the battle and had decided that if she made it through, she’d figure it out then. Go back home and lead what was left of her people? Get married? Have kids?

If that was her future, she’d rather have died in battle.

Meera downed her whole pint of ale.

She toasted towards a future of her own and for the air in her lungs that pushed her onwards into the unknown. 


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, heads pulsating with the effect of too much ale and the brightness of crisp white snow, Meera was expected in the great hall. She had vaguely been aware that the Starks knew of her presence, her father had sent a letter ahead of time with the list of troops he was sending with her name at the top, but it had been so chaotic she had never been greeted.

There had been bigger concerns. Undead ice dragons and an army that never died sized problems, to be more specific.

Meera never minded sleeping on a cot. She had done it so often that sleeping on a bed seemed to throw her off guard. With her people surrounding her, she had begun to feel a sense of community she hadn’t before.

This trip was alone. She had tied on the only dress she bothered bringing, a worn thing of rough fabric and patterns sewn of her family crest and of the bogs she had been raised in. It was only now that she first found herself a representative of her family.

The dress was comfortable, if she was giving it some credit, but Meera sometimes felt her legs would tangle in it. She wasn’t used to not having trousers between her legs, separating her skin. She felt unprotected. Sansa’s gaze at the front of the room seemed to strip her bare as she studied her.

“Lady Reed,” Sansa greeted after a second. “I apologize for not being able to greet you properly before the battle.”

“No need to apologize to me,” Meera responded politely. “You had bigger worries than greeting the daughter of a minor lord.”

“A minor lord that so happens to be an ally. And a daughter who is heir to that land,” Sansa rephrased.

Meera said nothing causing Sansa to sigh. “You were here before, when Jon left to visit the Dragon Queen. You took care of Bran for years. For that, you deserved a proper introduction. Or at least a proper goodbye.”

A proper goodbye would have been nice but it wasn’t from Sansa that Meera had been hoping for. “I had to return home to my father. I returned to Winterfell to fight for him, and for everyone I have lost. I was never looking for recognition.”

Sansa smiled. “You’re a better woman than most, Lady Reed.”

“Meera,” she corrected.

“In either case, Meera, I wanted to thank you for what you have done for our family,” Sansa continued. “I’ve had a room put aside for you in the guest wing should you decide to stay. I would also like to extend an offer of knighthood. Loyalty is something the Stark family has always honored… and I’m afraid I’ve only recently learned of what you’ve truly done for us.”

Done for him, was left unspoken. Many words that Meera wanted to say but couldn’t were also left unspoken. She had never been one to expect anything for her actions. And here Sansa was, recognizing them. 

The fall of her heavy heart, again, suggested that it wasn’t Sansa that Meera sought the words from. She longed for someone else and the recognition that what he had done had hurt her. Instead, she organized different words in her head to speak out loud.

“While I appreciate the offer, Lady Stark, I’ve never been one for knighthoods or gratitude. I do what I do because it’s right, not because I might have to or what I can receive in return. In fact, I should probably travel home soon… my father will be waiting for me.”

“Your father wouldn’t mind if you stayed with close family friends,” Sansa disagreed. “I had hoped you might join us in rebuilding. And…”

For the first time in Meera’s life, she saw Sansa hesitate.

“And?”

“We need help with Bran.”

And there is was. The reason Sansa invited her to stay and the reason Meera had been called into this meeting. Meera might not have acting in hope of something in return, but it was beginning to be clear that Sansa never did anything without reason.

Her first emotion was anger. Anger that they still expected this of her when all that Bran had given her had faded to carefully held eye contact and words that held no value. She had loved him once, the old Bran before he was the Three-Eyed Raven, but she would no longer be his keeper.

But then Meera registered the meaning of the sentence. They needed help. Something was wrong. She was not his keeper but she cared more than she’d like to admit she still did.

“Why?” She asked tersely.

“I’m afraid that he’ll never be himself again,” Sansa admitted. Her proud and tall stance seemed stooped slightly although she hadn’t moved. Maybe it was in the tired eyes and the corners of her mouth appearing to drag downward when she wasn’t bothering to look intimidating.

She certainly wasn’t intimidating now.

“He hasn’t been himself in a long while,” Meera found herself replying.

“He cares,” Sansa argued. “And he cares for you.”

“He did,” Meera said bitterly. 

“He does,” Sansa corrected. “I know my younger brother. He only has a terrible way of showing it. I’m afraid one day he won’t be able to show it at all.”

Meera was afraid of that too. That he’d be so caught up in his mind that he would forget to look at those in the present. And yet… she found that as much as she longed to speak to him, it wasn’t her problem to fix. She wouldn’t be taken advantage of. It had taken her months to get over his cold dismissal and here she was, throwing herself back into what had broken her heart to begin with.

“I’ll help rebuild,” she decided after silence stretched between them almost too long. “I will take volunteers to stay with me, but the rest will be sent home to their families. Those who stay can take the guest room you’ve offered me.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’d give a bed up for others,” Sansa said wryly.

“I’m used to the floor and they need more sleep.”

“You’re a lady,” Sansa disagreed.

Meera couldn’t help but snort. “I dragged your brother around on a cart for years, Lady Stark. I’m more fitted for trees than I am beds anyway.”

To her surprise, Sansa smiled. “You’re like Arya. Only you’ve somehow managed to keep your kindness.”

From what Meera understood, Arya was a wild thing. A faceless girl whether or not she was wearing a mask. Arya ran with wolves and carried knives to slit throats.

“I don’t think of it as remaining kind,” Meera said thoughtfully. “I think that sometimes other people’s needs are more important than mine.”

Sansa considered her for a minute, her hands roped together in front of her regally, before asking, “When do you consider your needs more important than theirs?”

Meera blinked. No one had bothered asking before. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Why don’t you learn,” Sansa suggested, but it sounded like a dismissal.

Meera carefully nodded and had turned to leave the room when she heard another question, “And Bran? Will you help him?”

Meera didn’t have an answer for that either. Instead, she pushed her way out of the heavy wooden doors and flew down the hallway and out past the Winterfell gates. In the distance was a weirtree, its leaves as bright red as the heart tree in the middle of a frozen lake and wilderness. The face eternally carved into the tree cried what must have been maple but instead mirrored Mira’s memories of those who had died.

It seemed to ask her a question.

It occurred to her that maybe she did know part of the answer. Meera’s needs were her own. And she wouldn’t give them up from someone who had hurt her, for someone who might as well have been a stranger. 

Meera was more important than those who did not consider who so.

Which meant that the other answer Sansa sought, would have to be a no. Not when Bran had dismissed her the way he did and when all she received was silence for months. She had built herself up and that was what she had needed, what she still needed. 

Meera would no longer risk herself for him. It was his turn to do something for her, for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update, school started back up again! I’m still figuring out where I want to go with this but I hope you enjoyed this little filler chapter before interesting stuff actually begins to happen. Also, thanks for the recent comment that served as a reminder for me to post this thing! Cheers, fellow!
> 
> Thanks everyone for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meera runs into Bran, or more accurately, Bran finally approaches Meera.

Despite earlier conviction, or maybe because of her earlier conviction, Meera spent no energy trying to avoid Bran. In a way, effort would be wasted if Bran hadn’t wanted to speak with her in the first place. If he did, and maybe part of her hoped this was the case, then he would have found a way. 

So instead she worked on rebuilding Winterfell. The few who had stayed, those who had lost all their family in battle and suddenly found themselves with nowhere else to go, stayed in a guest room Sansa had set up. Those who didn’t fit were given another guest room with explicit instructions that the bed was for Meera. 

Meera supposed that was fair. She would have to get used to a bed eventually.

When she replaced bricks on the top of the tower walls, sometimes she would see Bran by the weirtree. Occasionally one of his sisters were with him, and sometimes the new maester Sam, but often he went alone. She wondered what there was left to do for him now that the war had finally ended.

During dinners, she made acquaintances with fellow soldiers who had fought the white walkers by her side and the women who had only just learned to handle a sword. Sometimes she took to helping them train even as there was no threat on the horizon. Meera understood. There was something protective and confident about wielding a weapon that society had previously told you that you couldn’t.

There were others that helped train too.

Brienne of Tarth approached her one day and commented, “Hold the handle lower on the hilt and it’ll give you further agility.”

Meera looked up at her looming stature and down at the sword in her hand. Carefully, she adjusted her hands and felt the weight of her sword balance. She gave it a couple test swings and when she looked up, Brienne was watching her steadily.

“Thank you.”

“You have a small frame,” Brienne replied. “You can’t put as much weight into it as your opponent but you have other advantages. Learn to use them.”

“I don’t suppose you have to worry about the weight of your swing,” Meera couldn’t help but joke and Brienne huffed, the corner of her mouth tilting upward.

“No. I suppose not. Keep training, Meera Reed. The war may be over but for us, danger is never truly gone.”

Meera nodded. Behind Brienne, a tall golden-haired form hovered in the background as if waiting for their attention to shift to him. Brienne followed Meera’s gaze and greeted, “Jaime.”

“Brienne. I was hoping you could join me for dinner tonight. No one here much likes dining with the Kingslayer, wightslayer or not, unfortunately.”

“Of course,” Brienne said stiffly. They both nodded to each other as if they didn’t need to say more when there was so much already clinging between them.

Jaime Lannister had shoved Bran out a window. Jaime Lannister had crippled Bran for life. But Jaime Lannister, as much as it seemed odd to admit it, had changed. Meera had missed seeing their greeting but from what she had heard, Bran had dismissed Jaime as easily as he had dismissed her. With silence and ungenuine words that he felt had to be spoken.

At least Jaime had deserved the words that had been spoken.

Meera wondered if Bran ever spoke to Jaime after. She wondered if Bran would ever speak to her.

She didn’t need to wait long. A fortnight had passed when Bran first approached her in his chair, not through oddly observant birds, as she was helping stack logs that would help them through the rest of the winter. He looked the same as he had when she’d left, same gangly limbs and brown eyes, and Meera had to remind himself that he was not the Bran she remembered.

Help him, Sansa had asked. 

“Bran,” Meera greeted.

“Meera,” Bran said in return. God, he even sounded the same.

She looked away and focused on organizing wood into a pile. One log of wood onto another as they both said nothing. Was there anything to say? Or was there too much?

Finally she gave up and turned to look at him. He was still watching her in that way of his, both expectant and studying. She sat down on a log. “Would you like help with something?”

“Would you help me with something if I asked?” Bran asked in return.

It was a fair question. A large part of Meera told her that she absolutely would. She could tell herself that she didn’t care, that he didn’t care, and that it was no use in helping him. But she always helped those who needed help.

“No,” she lied.

“Then no,” Bran replied. “I do not need help with anything.”

They both spent a couple minutes watching each other, waiting for what they would say or just simply watching. Sometimes, when Bran had sought her out like this through his birds, Meera would be angry. Sometimes she would be bitter or resigned. With him here, she was simply just tired.

“What do you want, Bran?”

“I wanted to see you,” was his immediate reply.

When Meera’s eyes widened minimally in poorly concealed surprise, he remained as impassively stoic as ever but was willing to meet her gaze.

“Why?” she asked hesitantly.

“I dismissed you,” Bran replied and it felt like something was squeezing at her heart for the reminder, already turning cold enough to shatter if someone were to drive a knife through it.

“Did you miss me, is that what this is?” Meera asked, bitter and wounded.

Bran said nothing.

She pressed on anyway.

“Or are you here to apologize?”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

“Apologize.”

Meera stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t apologize to me. For sending me away with only a, thank you but I don’t need you anymore?”

“No,” Bran said, still impassive and steady.

Meera knew why he couldn’t but still she asked, “why not?”

Bran’s words reached out to greet her, doing exactly what was expected but somehow managing to make it hurt either way, “I’m not sorry for what I did.”

And there went the knife. Her walls had been built high after leaving him and yet somehow his words always slipped through the cracks. She shattered and was left the pick back up the pieces again. Her expression hardened and she looked away, moving to pick up more logs for stacking.

“Of course not,” she muttered. 

“Meera-“ Bran started. “I am not Brandon Stark anymore, nor can you expect me to be. But sending you away was the best option.”

”The option between what? Don’t I deserve the chance to decide?”

“No,” Bran answered simply.

Meera tossed a piece of wood harshly in the pile and turned to stare at him, crossing her arms. “This is my life, Brandon Stark, and not yours. You don’t get to play puppet with everyone simply because you’re some magical three-eyed raven now.”

”You would have chosen wrong.”

”It is still my choice! I don’t even know what I would have been choosing! What would have happened, Bran, if you hadn’t sent me away that I shouldn’t have the final say on!?”

”You would have died.”

Meera froze, still looking him in the eyes, and he remained gazing at her in return. He suddenly looked very tired in his chair and she wondered how long it had been since he slept. “How?” She asked shakily.

”Fate works in mysterious ways,” Bran answered. “But in every future in which you stayed at Winterfell, you died.”

”But I would have stayed with you,” Meera whispered.

”You had a role to play in the final battle. It was necessary for you to leave.”

”Did you want me to?” Meera found it within herself to ask, straightening her back. 

Bran gazed at her for a moment before answering, “Yes.”

Some part of Meera expected the answer even when another part screamed that he had cared, that it hadn’t all been a lie, that it hadn’t been necessary for her to leave. But the bitter part won and she turned away, “You never find the right words to say, do you Bran?”

Bran paused only a moment before agreeing, “No.”

Meera waited for him to try another answer again but when he didn’t, she sighed. “I think it’s best if you go.”

And when he turned and left, wheeling away back towards the castle, Meera couldn’t help but be disappointed. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was more disappointed in him or in herself.


	4. Chapter 4

After the first meeting, Bran never hesitated to seek her out. He was silent most the time and it seemed that when Meera didn’t see Bran, his eyes were glazed over with white as he sought into the future and past. She wondered what there was to see now but never asked. But one day she saw a wolf in the woods, watching her more alertly than most animals did, and she wondered if he was only doing it to walk again or to run.

She tolerated his presence and silently waited out the pressure she felt to open her mouth and say something, anything, that would break the clouded air between them.

When Sansa saw Meera with Bran, she would smile as if Meera were doing something proactively that suddenly helped Bran’s new proclivity to living in the present. She would occasionally see Bran’s other siblings often enough that Jon would give her a nod or Arya would challenge her to a spar.

Arya would always win but Meera appreciated the challenge in her eyes and the suddenly livelihood the other girl gained when fighting- moving as if in a dance. 

Maybe Bran would be that lively too, if he hadn’t lost his legs or become the three-eyed raven. Imagining the boy that Bran could have been broke Meera’s heart but she also loved the boy she had gotten to know: loyal and wise, with true Stark honesty and valor. 

This Bran was not the Bran she had gotten to know. But Meera saw hints in the way that he drifted towards his family, his councils with Sansa, and how he would stare down anyone threatening his family with a stoic gaze. Silence was his weapon.

Their silence was not a weapon but felt like it. She wondered if he felt it too.

“When are you going home?” Bran asked one day as they walked along the path overlooking the courtyard.

Meera hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “My father wants to see me. The rest of my people have likely made it back by now.”

“Your people,” Bran repeated.

It had become such a habit to refer to them as such that Meera hadn’t noticed. Since leaving Winterfell, she had become part of something larger than she was. Her father was a lord and as his only child, Meera was to be the lady of Greywater Watch. Becoming part of the people, establishing herself as one of her countrymen, had been something she never thought of to do until she had lost everything else she had. In a way, having her people had saved her from getting lost too much in her thoughts.

“My people,” she verified.

“You’ll go home to them,” Bran said but it didn’t feel as confident as it was when he was speaking of the future. This was a question.

“I don’t know,” she said again. They paused on the wooden bridge on top of the gates, watching each other as they always seemed to whether or not the other was looking. “I’m lady of the Greywater Watch, Bran. Just as you are the three-eyed raven. We have responsibilities now.”

Bran blinked and then spun his chair to look out over Winterfell and away from her. “You don’t want to go home,” he said again, as if asking a question.

Meera did. She didn’t. She didn’t think she could. Instead, the part of her that liked to hurt and desperately wanted to know, asked, “Would you stop me?”

“No,” Bran answered, which was a fair answer.

Meera pursed her lips and wondered how this had all gone wrong. So instead she didn’t say a word, just as Bran never said what he was thinking beyond the facts or a yes or no, and looked over the courtyard.

Arya was speaking with the blacksmith, her soldier’s posture steadily seeming more loose each day. Brienne trailed Jon and Sansa as they discussed politics and Jon’s trip to King's Landing to help the new Queen Daenerys. Meera caught sight of the small boy she had helped during battle with a woman she assumed was his mother. When she smiled at that, Simon had looked up and caught her eye. 

Before she knew it, he had tapped at his mother’s hand and whispered something in her ear when she bent over. The woman looked up at Meera and both of them made eye contact, unsure how to act in this situation. Finally, she whispered something to Simon who ran off as she started towards the stairs. Meera tracked her progress until she was a couple feet away, both of them hesitant.

“You saved my son,” was what was spoken first.

“I didn’t save him. I just helped him be braver.”

“Sometimes that’s enough,” the woman said and before Meera knew it, she was being embraced. Cautiously, Meera placed her arms around her in return. When the woman stepped back, she was smiling.

“I’m glad you survived,” Meera found herself saying.

“I almost didn’t. I don’t know what would have happened to my poor Simon. But I suppose if you are any example, he would have been okay.”

Meera shook her head. “I lost my mother when I was young. Perhaps he would have survived, but I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the woman frowned.

“It happened a long while ago,” Meera dismissed, all of a sudden away of the boy beside her who had lost his mother only a couple years ago but might as well have lost her once cast from Winterfell with crippled legs and his brother. 

Something must have brought the woman’s attention to Bran as well because the woman looked over at Meera’s side and stiffened. “Lord Stark. I apologize, I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s quite alright,” Bran said. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry for your loss as well,” the woman continued.

Now it was Bran’s turn to freeze in his chair, or at least sit upright, and Meera wondered who he was thinking about. They had all lost so much. And Bran had the ability to see all of the past and the future, to see what he normally would have not. 

“Thank you,” he said stiffly.

“I’m so sorry for interrupting,” the woman immediately spoke. “It was lovely to meet you…”

“Meera. Just call me Meera.”

“Meera, then. Thank you, again. Excuse my manners, Lord Stark. I’ll just be on my way.”

Bran remained silent, letting her turn and leave, while Meera exchanged grateful smiles with her. When Meera turned back, he was watching her. Meera knew she didn’t have to explain what had happened if the bird that had been watching her at the time she had encountered the small frightened Simon during the battle was anything to go off of.

“You’re going to be a great lady of the Greywater Watch,” he said suddenly.

Meera blinked in surprise and quickly turned away so that he couldn’t see the flush that didn’t come from the cold winter air. “I don’t want to be a lady,” she admitted, finding it easier when she wasn’t staring into his knowledgeable brown eyes. “I almost wish we were out camping in the wilderness again.”

“Me too,” Bran said, and Meera had to force her gaze to remain away when she desperately wanted to see his expression.

“You wouldn’t be the three-eyed raven, if we were.”

“I know.”

This time Meera did meet his gaze before speaking again, “You still wouldn’t be able to walk.”

“I know,” Bran countered.

Meera had ignorantly thought that he couldn’t process happiness anymore. Not with his stoic expression and withheld actions. It had been part of her wall, she assumed, pretending he was heartless. But he wasn’t. Or he could be, but wasn’t at the moment.

Back then, everyone she loved had been alive and unchanged. They had been young and didn’t have to worry about being lords and ladies. It simply day by day, telling joked around a fire or hunting rabbits in the forest before winter had come. It was hard not to wish they were still in the time even when they wouldn’t be who they were today.

Maybe walking didn’t constitute happiness. Maybe having a small group of friends and somewhere to go was enough. They had responsibilities then, but it hadn’t controlled them until they realized where the future was headed.

Now Meera had the entire future ahead of her and no idea where to go. Maybe Bran was the same.

“You sent me away,” she reminded him. “You wanted to. I would have stayed, I would have died for you, if you had asked.”

“I don’t want another person to die for me,” Bran answered.

Meera considered this information and found it slotted into her questions and fit the answers she was looking for perfectly. “Why didn’t you tell me,” she whispered.

“I couldn’t,” Bran said, which wasn’t an answer but was answer enough.

Meera caught Sansa’s glance as she looked back over the courtyard and for once she felt like the hope in her smile was justified.


	5. Chapter 5

Time went by slowly in the winter. Winterfell had been bunkering down for the cold frost for months. It could have even been years if they counted the supplies they had found in the numerous tunnels beneath the castle, assumably the planning of the late Ned Stark. With the white walkers gone, there was only the cold they had left in their wake to deal with.

There were two major things that happened that week as if her conversation with Bran had prompted it. One, she got a letter from her father. Two, Sansa had started inviting Meera to her council meetings. 

At first Meera thought it odd but as she looked around the room, she realized that like everything that Sansa did, her presence had purpose. The small Mormont girl was passionate and spoke up for her people and those further north than Winterfell. A few others could be depended on for the same while Jaime spoke for the south. Jon spoke for beyond the wall along with a red bearded wildling. Sansa had gathered a peace council. It was possible that Daenerys was doing the same at King’s Landing but Meera thought it was likely Jon would just arrive with all of the information she needed.

Meera sat near the end of the table representing the Greywater Watch and those in the moors. According to her father’s letter, sitting in front of her on the table, winter had already reached her people but not as strongly as it had in Winterfell. But it was expected to.

Bran also sat at the table, near the front, and while he paid attention, Meera always had the strong suspicion he wanted to be somewhere else. Occasionally he would disappear into that head of his or interrupt with a progress of a coming storm, seeming both out of place and belonging at the same time.

Wind blew harshly past the window, loud enough to be heard in swirling tunnels, and finally Sansa turned to Meera. “Lady Reed, your father has enough supplies to last a long winter, yes?”

Meera thought back to the letter she had last received, held her breath for a moment, and answered, “They’ve been stockpiling for months now, my lady. But the crannog aren’t used to the snow, I fear I may have to travel back to help.”

She could feel Bran watching her even as Sansa hummed in acknowledgement before looking down at the map. A minute later, Bran’s gaze still burning into the side of her face, Sansa looked up and studied her. “The Reed family has always been loyal to the Starks, I would hate to lose allies to the cold of winter.”

The ‘but’ was left unsaid. But Meera felt it hovering above them and in the presence of Bran and the first conversation she had once had with his auburn haired sister. 

“Are you sure you’d be able to help them?” Sansa asked. “Is there someone else you can send in your stead?”

“No,” Meera answered, expecting the question. “I survived beyond that wall and my father is getting old. They need me home.”

Sansa pursed her lips together, nodded, and then turned to Jaime Lannister, “Is there still snow in the south?”

And while conversation continued, Meera turned her attention back down to the parchment in front of her where she had carefully folded the corners together in her anxiousness. Her father’s handwriting was still recognizable under her efforts even if she could admit she hadn’t meant to tarnish his letter. But she was frustrated, even now. Meera began the process of unfolding as she refused to meet Bran’s gaze. She wasn’t ashamed of wanting to help her family and the people who had helped her when she needed it, but she couldn’t help feel ashamed of one thing.

“You didn’t tell me,” Bran said, as everyone was dismissed and his chair had made its way to her side.

“I didn’t think I had to,” Meera said. It was both a lie and a truth. She knew he likely already knew of her plans she had been making ever since the news of an incoming storm the previous day, but she also knew that it was a topic that had to be breached in person. Whatever relationship they had built felt to fragile, too easily breakable, for her to just leave.

Meera had no clue what they were. 

Bran seemed to sense her lie, or her truth, and said nothing. Instead she walked down the hallway with him wheeling beside her in silence. It was the kind of silence that desperately needed to be filled so she did.

“It’s not to leave you. I haven’t seen my father in months and he says he’s growing weaker,” she decided to say. Her words had been swimming around in her head since receiving the letter, trying to figure out what to say. “They need me at Greywater Watch, more than you need me here.”

“Your father is dying,” Bran said simply, saying the words that Howland Reed had managed to say in his letter but Meera couldn’t say out loud.

The other day, when they were standing together overlooking Winterfell, Meera had felt as though she didn’t want to leave. This is what had changed- why she decided to go home and why she couldn’t bring herself to tell Bran of her sudden indecision.

“Yes,” Meera agreed even though it hadn’t been a question.

“You want to go,” Bran said again in that strange factual way of his.

Meera didn’t know. She wished she could have both- the company and companionship of the Starks and to be able to care for her people. She wanted to be there for her father when he died, her last remaining family, but if she went, she knew that she would become Lady of Greywater Watch in more than just word. She wanted to stay with Bran despite all the warnings her heart kept pumping out but she also wanted to live a life of adventure. She couldn’t have all of them.

There was no satisfiable answer.

“I need to go,” Meera said because there seemed like no way of explaining that sometimes what she wanted went against what she didn’t want at all. 

They arrived in front of her room and it occurred to her than Bran had dropped her off at her doorway. He looked up at her, seeming to understand what she was trying to convey. 

Meera was suddenly reminded of their conversation in which she would have stayed if he had only just asked. He had told her that he wouldn’t ask now, once she had decided to go home again. Which was good. She didn’t think she would be able to handle him asking after so long of wishing that he would have. 

But Meera knew she’d have to go either way.

“When are you leaving?” Bran asked instead.

“Soon enough to keep ahead of the storm,” which was to say within the week.

He didn’t have to ask if she’d be back. He didn’t have to ask much which meant he likely already knew. The only reason he’d likely ask for anything anymore would be to know which path she would follow. “Tomorrow,” he said eventually. 

Meera had known this new version of Bran, this version that was also the Three-Eyed Raven, long enough to know that this time it wasn’t a dismissal. It was a suggestion. It was her best route of travel. It was his way of giving her something.

She nodded. “I’ll tell Sansa then.”

Before Meera could do something stupid like kiss his cheek or say something she’d regret, she opened the door to her room. 

“Meera,” Bran called out before she could shut herself away completely. 

When Meera turned around, she could no longer see the Three-Eyed Raven or some Winterfell prince who sat calmly in his chair. Instead, all she could see was a teenaged boy with the weight of the world on his back and who would never walk again. This was the tragedy of Brandon Stark. Meera no longer had to wonder why the Three-Eyed Raven had been so much of a temptation that he had almost lost himself, who he used to be, in trying to become something new.

“Yes, Bran?” She asked.

“Write to me,” he suggested after a visible amount of time testing words in his head. With a final consideration he added, “Please.”

Meera smiled. They both know he didn’t need letters to keep up on what she was doing. He wanted them. “Of course,” she said simply.

Bran nodded again and without much else to say, he carefully spun a wheel of his chair in order to turn himself around a start back down the hallway. Meera allowed herself to watch, if only for a second, before closing the door behind her to draft a few messages saying that she was going home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a result of me procrastinating finals and having the sudden urge to write. This chapter is a prologue of sorts but I don't count it as one because I think that the battle and Meera and Bran's actions when separated and in danger are fun to explore a little.
> 
> Just a heads up, I suck at multi-chapter fics and updating them but I will try and feel free to keep reminding me. Bother away.
> 
> The title is from Things We Lost In The Fire by Bastille if you want to check it out. That's basically the premise of this fic so. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, folks, and I hope you look forward to the next update!


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